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Another Receipt for Gravy Soup

A hearty beef gravy soup made with bones, onions, and a rich sauce of butter, flour, sherry, soy sauce, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Dredge the beef with flour.

  2. Season the beef with salt and pepper.

  3. Fry the beef until browned.

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef, fried onions, and 3 quarts of cold water in a deep stewpan.

  2. Bring the liquid to a brisk boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer gently until the broth is reduced and a glaze forms at the bottom.

  4. Strain the soup to remove fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed smoothly.

  2. Add sherry, soy sauce, and cayenne.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Browning from frying builds savory flavor, and the meat gives the broth its body.
Flour
Coats the beef for browning and, mixed with butter, thickens the finished soup.
Fried onions
Caramelized sweetness and savory depth form the base flavor of the broth.
Butter
Mixed with flour, it enriches the soup and thickens it smoothly.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich broth.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour mixed smoothly. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it smoothly with butter first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, sherry, sauce, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, sherry, sauce, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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